


a party where no one’s still alive (leave your body and soul at the door)

by aboutloveandbrutality



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Post-Season/Series 03, References to Depression, essentially just Steve trying to exist post-Billy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-10 14:36:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20853389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboutloveandbrutality/pseuds/aboutloveandbrutality
Summary: Billy Hargrove had had the last bullet needed to dismantle the whole structure ofSteve. One by one, they’d been embedded in his flesh, impossible to pull out no matter how many times he cried at mom and dad’s vacant bedroom, at a nail-sprouting bat, at the moon’s reflection in his fuming pool.When Billy dealt that last blow it was almostsweet, going down without a fight, when he’d been putting one up for so long.





	1. July

**Author's Note:**

> title from Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo

**Prelude**

Of all the fights and the blood and the wounds and the deaths to pick from, Steve’s brain keeps bringing him back to one night, seven years ago.

Before he was ever aware of the beings crawling underneath his feet, before he was ever heart broken by someone he’d thought he’d marry, before he ever found himself a high school graduate with no admission letter and no real friends. 

He had been sitting at the dinner table, a mouthful of pasta and smoke, washed down with Pepsi and smoke, every breath in between tasting like burnt turkey with the way his mother went through cigarettes in the kitchen.

One time, he’d found ashes in his mashed potatoes, gray pixels that looked like rot, spreading, contaminating, and he pushed his plate away from his chest, hadn’t registered the look in his mom’s ruddy face as shame until years later, once she’d already stopped cooking for them altogether. 

His father had been boasting about the surgery he’d performed at the hospital in Indianapolis, on a patient with _ embolism into the cerebral circulation caused by a gunshot wound. _ Nothing Steve or his mom could understand but it sounded like something to be proud of, nonetheless, so they beamed an identical beam at a man who was not deserving.

He explained the case was a rare complication caused by a bullet. Steve thought guns were cool, Tommy’s older brother had taken them to the junkyard a couple times to shoot at the carcass of a school bus, the three of them taking turns opening fire against the van, pretending it was the Commies.

He asked his dad how many bullets there were; he said only one. Steve asked if it was hard to take it out. His dad laughed. 

“We didn’t take it out,” he said, and laughed even more when Steve looked confused, that condescending way adults laugh at kids, whether they say something smart or stupid. Steve guessed he’d said the latter. “Taking out a bullet has nothing to do with saving a patient’s life.” 

“You’d be surprised how many people walk around with bullets in their X-rays,” his mom chimed in, like she somehow got it. “Finish your food, darling, it’ll get cold.”

And that was that. Fork to mouth, tomato sauce and smoke, carbonated sugar and more smoke, goodnight kisses and lights off. 

Steve’s last thought that evening had been of a thousand people perambulating with projectiles wiggling under their skins, and how they had gone to doctors like his father and sat in hard hospital mattresses and drifted off to sleep only to wake up and find out things weren’t going to be the same ever again.

Things were okay, they were alive, but they would never be _ perfect_, again. There was a piece of something terrible, something you only aim at things you want to depredate, lodged inside their bodies, now. And the fact that not even his _ dad _ could fix it just made everything worse. 

Then, slowly but surely, he’d stopped tuning in to his parents’ conversation, and one day they seized all conversations entirely, because there wasn’t a family at the dinner table anymore, because Steve wasn’t inside himself as often anymore, because nobody could fucking stand each other anymore.

Steve had other things to think about before bed, pleasant things, he had friends like Tommy H. and Carol and Vicki and Nicole and then — _ bang_. 

He had girlfriends like Laurie and then Amy and then Becky and then Nancy Wheeler and then — _ bang_.

He had titles like the Hawkins High throne and the keg stand kingship and the basketball team captaincy and then — _ bang_. 

Billy Hargrove had had the last bullet needed to dismantle the whole structure of _ Steve_. One by one, they’d been embedded in his flesh, impossible to pull out no matter how many times he cried at mom and dad’s vacant bedroom, at a nail-sprouting bat, at the moon’s reflection in his fuming pool.

When Billy dealt that last blow it was almost _ sweet_, going down without a fight, when he’d been putting one up for so long. 

His mom had always told him not to let the world make him hard. He figured that ended up being the whole _ problem_.

Because as he sits, alone, thinking about the friends and the girls and the sports scholarship Billy Hargrove’s hurricane-like existence collaterally took from him, it's Billy who Steve feels bad for.

He was 17, maybe 18. Still a kid, driving the first car he ever got, working his first job, spending his first summer away from the ocean. They had also been his last. 

Steve thinks about seeing his picture on the papers. It wasn’t on the cover, wasn’t centerfold, wasn’t a _ nice _ picture. It was his senior portrait and he was wearing the same shirt as when he bashed Steve’s face in.

His photograph was plastered among many others, in the same proportions and grayscale, people Billy would’ve never been around in life, would've never blended in with.

Steve bought every copy of _ The Hawkins Post _ he could find from that day and stacked them inside his closet. Some days he’d tear Billy’s face in half, other days he’d carefully cut around him and set the black and white rectangle aside, pretend it wasn’t real, it wasn’t his life, it wasn’t his fate.

One time, drunk, he fucking bit right into the page, closed his jaw around Billy’s head, the halo of words that surrounded him, and ripped it off, leaving a damp, round hole in the paper, like he'd just shot it. Steve is _angry_, and he’s tired.

He drives by the remains of Starcourt Mall, searches for that tan boy from California who always seemed to be crawling out of his skin, claustrophobic, bouncing between tall trees and hills and never quite landing where he wanted.

Steve thinks about Billy _ now_, more landlocked than ever, six feet in the ground, and lets out a pained laugh, condescending. Billy is dead. His father didn’t hold a funeral. He didn’t buy a headstone.

Steve wonders what anyone could possibly have it engraved with, _ Billy Hargrove, beloved son and brother, forever stuck underneath a town he hated, inches above the very monster that killed him. _Steve realizes he doesn’t know Billy’s middle name. 

He wonders when he let himself grow hard, against his mother’s best wishes and meager efforts. When he closed himself off to the world, when a good day meant getting the same numbers of breaths in and out, and decides it wasn’t just one thing, and it wasn’t all at once.

As far as he knows, it started the day he was born. But he definitely remembers feeling safe and child-like, then feeling _ that _ slip through his fingers, non-consensually, gradually taken from him, long before today. 

Steve remembers feeling like that kid from a story his grandmother would tell him, of a little boy who sees a crack in a dam and puts his finger in it, waits all night in the cold weather for an adult to come and fix it, ends up saving everyone in town. 

But in Steve’s story, nobody comes, and the dam breaks anyway, and the water washes him away. Some days he stays afloat, other days he drowns.

In Steve’s story, he starts off king of the world and ends up homebound, breathless, with Billy Hargrove, flayed and defiled, dogging his thoughts like an itch he can’t scratch.

The one certainty he does have is that he stopped feeling _ okay _ way too early in his life, when he still tasted tobacco with his meatloaf, when his mom still tucked him into his blankets, when his dad first told him about bullet-swallowing bodies and the sad, sad people that inhabit them.


	2. August

**August, 1985**

Steve’s lying on his back in bed, one ankle under his knee, reading a book. He’s got a hand behind his head, the expanse of his open chest rising and falling with carefully calculated breaths. He’s  _ relaxing._

His other hand is holding up a book, some novel Jonathan lent him weeks ago, elbow parallel to his side, supporting its weight. His eyes are barely skimming the pages, he registers something about  _bokononism_ and  _ice-nine_ and thinks _this is it, _this is his last straw of sanity leaking out. 

He doesn’t understand  _why_ Jonathan had just  offered it to Steve. Maybe he had wanted to bond. Steve was confused because like,  _ don’t they share enough already, hah, _but nothing compares to how confused he is  _reading_ the damn thing. 

It’s barely noon and he already feels stupid.

There’s a knock on his door that Steve almost welcomes, for a change, putting the book face down on his belly when his mom walks in. “Hey, baby,” her voice is thick and sweet like porridge, has a nostalgic knack to it, like an old Hollywood actress’s. She’s equally stunning, too. 

His mom struts to the bed, sinks down by his foot and puts a hand on his knee, rubbing. Apologetic. “Your dad has a conference tomorrow in Detroit, he says it’s best to leave today. Would you like me to stay?” 

Steve shakes his head  almost instantly, without thinking. He does it softly, though, dismisses her, because she doesn’t have to stay, because he knows she’ll be crawling up the walls once she tries calling the hotel and his father inevitably doesn’t pick up, because she’ll sit by the pool smoking and then he won’t be able to sleep at all. 

Would he like her to stay? Sure,  _probably_. But she doesn’t  _have_ to, and that’s kind of the whole point of her question. It’s more,  _how much_ would you like me to stay? And these days, there’s nothing Steve wants enough to make his existence a hindrance to anyone. 

So, he nudges her fondly and says, “It’s okay, mom. Seriously,  _go_.” 

“Baby,” she repeats, reaching forward to ruffle his hair; he scrunches up his nose. “How did I raise such a  _good boy_?” 

“Pretty singlehandedly,” Steve says and his mom pinches him in reprimand, still smiling.

Everyone says they have the same smile. They have the same nose and hair, too.  _The same taste in unfaithful people, _he thinks. It’s a sharp, painful thought, and it stings like a toothache. 

At least he didn’t say it out loud. 

She’s getting up, already, anyway.

“I baked a cake! Did you see?” she knows he didn’t  _see, _because he’s been in his room since he woke up, hasn’t even showered yet, but he did smell it, a crisp chocolate smell, a little burnt aftertaste. Smelled about right. 

“I did. Smelled good,” his mother’s smile widens. She pokes her head forward, turtle-like, and Steve snorts. She’s kind of lanky, like him. Or maybe it’s the other way around —  _singlehanded_, alright. She kisses his forehead and says they’ll be gone within the hour, his dad will come upstairs to hug him goodbye, too.

Steve ends up falling back asleep after reading twenty or so more pages. When he wakes up again, it’s dark outside his window, his is the only car in the driveway, and there is someone ringing his doorbell incessantly. He groans, pleading at his ceiling, legs jolting up and landing beside his bed, a beat before the book does. 

Afternoon naps aren’t something he’s used to taking, anymore, even though he’s teetering on the edge of  _exhausted_, most days. If he’s being totally honest, sleep hasn’t been a priority in his life in a while

It’s funny, really, because currently, he doesn’t have shit to do. No job because his workplace burned down, no school because he didn’t manage to get into any, no summer program at the Police Station because Hopper got blown to chunks in the Russian base underneath Starcourt Mall, so. Yeah. Full circle or whatever. 

Steve opens his front door to Robin Buckley and Dustin Henderson, him holding a Tupperware and her holding a bottle of  _Babycham_. Steve manages not to groan again. 

They look like they’re there for a wake, like Steve’s a disheveled widow who just buried a husband, and well. It’s not  _too _different from how he usually feels, nowadays. 

Dustin starts forward, hugging around Steve’s waist, the plastic container in his hand digging into Steve’s spine. He winces and hugs back. 

“Happy freaking birthday, dingus! You gonna invite us in, or what?” Robin says, already pushing her way inside, rubbing the soles of her red Chuck Taylors on his mother’s hateful bird-print carpet.

Dustin follows suit, and Steve lets them guide him into his own kitchen, Robin taking a seat on the counter, next to the sink. Steve sees his mother’s cake for him for the first time that day, by Robin’s hip. He gestures at it, vaguely, all like,  _don’t crush it, fatass_. She nods. 

“My mom baked you cupcakes,” Dustin chimes in, ripping off the lid from the Tupperware. Inside are two vanilla cupcakes, as far as Steve can tell, topped with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles. “I kinda, uh... got hungry on the drive here.”

Robin drives a minivan. She probably drove herself and Dustin to Steve’s house in it. Steve thinks that’s just gold, loves to tease her about it. Pretend they’re a couple, a family of six when they’re with the kids. He takes the plastic container from Dustin, sinks a hand in his curls and shakes. “Thanks, man. Like the sprinkles.”

“So,” Robin swipes a finger on the icing on his mom’s cake, sucks it into her mouth. “We _would_ have brought everyone over but you said you wanted to be alone, so,” she finishes the same way she started, trailing off, looking at him expectantly. It’s not like Steve’s going to  _kick them out_ or anything. 

Dustin hums around a mouthful of cupcake. “Besides, we didn’t know if like,  _El_ would want to come, or  _Max,_ and then Mike and Lucas because  _duh_,” —  _eyeroll_ — “since, you know, it’s, uh...”

“It’s been a month,” Steve finishes for him. Dustin looks at his shoes. “It’s the_one month anniversary_,” he continues, rolling the words around in his mouth. They feel too foreign. They have an anniversary like that, now. 

That’s partly the reason why he hadn’t wanted to do anything today. It felt weird celebrating life. Most days he barely acts like a person, anyway, still stuck in that mall, under it, still drifting in and out of consciousness and expecting to wake up back there.

“Uh. Well—yes. Yes, it’s been a month.”  _God _that’s depressing. How tragedy is never self contained. How it lingers like a bad smell, even when you think it’s okay to breathe again. Steve reckons there will be many more months like this one to come, and he doesn’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing. 

“_Which_ reminds me, we should start looking for jobs,” Robin begins, prefacing a rant about her overwhelming school schedule, which Steve doesn’t tune into. They’re drinking the goddamn  _Babycham_ now, just him and her, a scowling Dustin sipping his root beer straight from the can. It’s an okay way to end the day, Steve guesses. 

They sing him happy birthday — his mom forgot the candles — and marathon  _Star Wars_. Eventually the movies start blending together in Steve’s head, partly because of the alcohol, partly because of exhaustion, partly because it’s the anniversary and partly because he’s just dumb. 

He doesn’t know how many parts he’s allowed before he has to take full blame, but he knows he can’t _fix_ any of them, so he just sits back on his couch and listens vaguely to Dustin complaining about how there shouldn’t be noise in space. 

It’s one in the morning when Steve peels himself from his spot between his two best friends, the sweaty backs of his knees sticking to leather. It’s unbearably stuffy in his living room and he feels like can’t breathe for a moment. 

It’s no longer his birthday.

He’s twenty.

Billy’s dead.

It’s so  _hot in there_.

Steve takes the stairs two steps at a time and goes into his bedroom, making a bee line to his closet. He reaches between the ajar doors and blindly plucks a copy of  _The Hawkins Post _ from July 4th, 1985, from atop his dwindling pile. 

He opens on the story about Starcourt. He reads and reads until none of the words are making sense anymore, until they sound like Jonathan’s book, until the narrative seems just as fake and distant, until he can look at those gray faces and feel nothing at all. 

He drifts off to sleep for the third time, on his bedroom floor, drooling on the carpet, clutching the newspaper like a floater.

He dreams in black and white. 


End file.
